Jamelle Bouie

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Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States, Howard Chandler Christy

Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States, Howard Chandler Christy In the United States, voting rights don’t march forward as much as they ebb and flow. Often, it happens like this: The prospect of short-term political gain leads one of the two parties to make a massive push for democratic participation, which is then countered by the other side, which has an equally large interest in maintaining a smaller electorate of particular people. In the late 18th century, for instance, New Jersey was one of the few states to grant voting rights to (property-owning) women. The exact reasons for taking this path are unclear, but partisan politics had something to do with it—“As different political groups struggled to gain ascendancy during and just after the revolution, they tried to enlarge their potential constituencies, one of which was female,” writes historian Alexander Keyssar in The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the...

Last night , Ohio Governor John Kasich took a little time from his weekend to sign a new $65 billion budget for the state. There are many moving parts to the law, including a $2.5 billion tax cut which—like most Republican tax cuts—is meant to help the rich at the expense of everyone else. But of those parts, the most relevant for discussion—given last week’s fiasco in the Texas Senate—are the new restrictions on all reproductive services. In addition to slashing tax burdens on the wealthiest Ohioans, the budget measure signed yesterday would allocate federal funds away from Planned Parenthood—which uses them to provide contraception and other health services, not abortion—to crisis pregnancy centers, which claim to offer support, counseling and a full range of options for women who think they may be pregnant. In reality, they are overtly anti-abortion. “[A]ccording to personal accounts compiled by the National Abortion and Reproductive...

Early this afternoon, the Senate voted for cloture on the Gang of Eight’s comprehensive immigration reform bill, with 68 senators supporting and 32 in opposition (60 are needed to break a filibuster). Fourteen Republicans joined the 54-member Democratic caucus to move the legislation forward to a final vote, which will be held this afternoon at 4pm. This means, in essence, that immigration reform will pass the Senate. The only question is the margin. New York Senator Chuck Schumer, one of the members of the Gang of Eight, says he wants 70 votes for passage, in order to pressure House Republicans into passing the bill as well. Two things complicate that calculus. First, a large number of House Republicans are still skeptical of the need for immigration reform, and doubt the president’s motives in pushing a bill. For example, Rep. Peter Roskam, the Republican deputy whip, accused the White House of wanting immigration reform to fail, in order to run against Republicans in...

Jamelle Bouie Rick Perry on the trail at the Lizard Thicket restaurant in South Carolina Wednesday. Texas Governor Rick Perry is speaking to the National Right to Life Convention, and given the events of the last few days, it’s no surprise he’s commenting on Wendy Davis and her filibuster of harsh anti-abortion restrictions. (You can read Abby Rapoport on Davis's filibuster here .) In criticizing Davis, Perry had a choice. He could dispute the state senator on the substance of her opposition, or he could attack her motives and her experiences. To no one’s shock, Perry—who occupies the far-right of the Republican Party—chose the latter. Jay Root, a reporter for the Texas Tribune , tweets one of Perry’s statements: . @GovernorPerry says @WendyDavisTexas was a "teenage mother herself" and it's unfortunate "she hasn't learned from her own example." — Jay Root (@byjayroot) June 27, 2013 The full quote is here: In fact, even the woman who...

The opening lines of Antonin Scalia's dissent in United States v. Windsor —where a 5–4 majority of the Supreme Court overturned the 1997 Defense of Marriage Act on equal protection grounds—are straightforward: "We have no power to decide this case. And even if we did, we have no power under the Constitution to invalidate this democratically adopted legislation." For anyone interested in judicial restraint, it’s a compelling case. Too bad Scalia doesn’t fit that description. To wit, this unwillingness to strike down “democratically adopted legislation” was nonexistent just yesterday, when he joined John Roberts's opinion on Shelby County, Albama v. Holder . There, he agreed with the Chief Justice’s decision to strike down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, despite the fact that it had been reauthorized by a near-unanimous Congress in 2006. What explains the difference between the two laws? Easy. Scalia (and Roberts, for that matter) don...